2014

The Vancouver Art Gallery will be transformed into the Court of China's Emperors for
the landmark exhibition The Forbidden City: Inside the Court of China's Emperors. From October 18,
2014 to January 11, 2015, nearly 200 treasured objects from the collections of Beijing's Palace
Museum will come under the spotlight at the Gallery. This exhibition will mark another important
milestone in the Vancouver Art Gallery's ongoing commitment to represent the historical and
contemporary art of China and the Asia Pacific region. Read more.

Presenting Corporate Sponsor:

Presenting Foundation Sponsor:

The Forbidden City: Inside the Court of China's Emperors is organized by the Palace Museum, Beijing, China and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Supported by the Government of Canada /
Avec l'appui du gouvernement du Canada

Hotel Partner:

Visionary Partner for Scholarship and Publications:The Richardson Family

The Vancouver art gallery has the most important collection of Canadian art in British Columbia. Featuring works from the Gallery's permanent collection, Painted Past traces the history of painting in both Canada and the province. The exhibition includes works by such artists as B.C. Binning, Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, Frederick Varley and David Milne, as well as contemporary figures such as Attila Richard Lukacs, Etienne Zack and Joanne Tod. Read more.

This exhibition comprises recent acquisitions to the Vancouver Art
Gallery's permanent collection.
Featured works present the figure as an
actor staged within a landscape steeped in
cultural significance. Ranging from historic
to contemporary, On Stage includes work
by Kati Cambell, Angela Grossman, Ken
Lum, Michael Morris, Lawrence Paul
Yuxweluptun and many others. Read more.

In conjunction with Douglas Coupland's solo exhibition, the Vancouver Art Gallery has commissioned a site-specific public sculpture located on the grassy mound on the Howe Street side of the Gallery. Gumhead is a seven-foot tall self-portrait that the artist has described as "a gum-based, crowd-sourced, publicly interactive, social-sculpture self-portrait." Read more

Vancouver-Based artIst Babak Golkar will present several large terracotta pots at Offsite. Each vessel is uniquely designed to contain a scream, providing a unique location for viewers to release excess feelings encountered in the everyday. Both clever and playful, Golkar's installation takes a critical look at the effects of increased expectations and anxiety in contemporary society. Read more.

Lost in the Memory Palace, a selected survey, takes as its focus Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's work from the mid-1990s to today. Presenting key early installations such as The Dark Pool (1995) and The Muriel Lake Incident (1999) and recent works including The Killing Machine (2007) and Experiment in F# Minor (2013), the exhibition offers an opportunity to consider the important role of the room in their art. For Cardiff and Miller the room offers shelter from a stormy world. It is a place to withdraw and to convalesce; it is a site of mystery and danger, and in some instances, of death. Read more.

Out of Sight: New Acquisitions features works that have been added, through donation or purchase, to the Gallery's collection over the past three years, many of which will be on view
for the first time. The exhibition is centred on the recent donation of 80 photographs by Harold Edgerton, who is credited with inventing ultra high-speed stroboscopic photography to capture events that occur too quickly to be viewed by the human eye. Taking Edgerton's remapping of the possibilities of space and time as a thematic starting point, New Acquisitions explores artists' engagement with ideas around perception and representation, challenging viewers to reconsider what it is we see in our everyday encounters.

Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything is the first major survey exhibition of the artist's work and will be presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery from May 31-September 1, 2014. Douglas Coupland is an artist based in West Vancouver whose remarkably prolific production across a diverse range of media over the past 12 years addresses the singularity of Canadian culture, the ubiquity and power of language, as well as the ever-pervasive presence of technology in everyday life. Read more

This exhibition presents a new body of sculpture by the Vancouver-based artist Myfanwy MacLeod. Drawing upon motifs associated with the sexually charged music of Led Zeppelin and the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien, the exhibition examines the conventions of the heroic quest as a male fantasy.

Presented in conjunction with Myfanwy MacLeod, or There and Back Again, this exhibition features work from the Gallery's permanent collection selected by Myfanwy MacLeod and Grant Arnold following the model of "cock and bull story,"...Read more.

This exhibition presents work by Toronto-based photographer Edward Burtynsky, who is internationally renowned for his captivating images of natural and man-made landscapes that reflect both the impressive reach of human enterprise and the extraordinary impact of our hubris.

Scorned: Emily Carr engages in dialogue with the concurrent exhibition A Terrible Beauty: Edward Burtynsky, presenting works that demonstrate Carr's interest in the denatured landscape–an occasional, but notable, subject of her work. Read more.

This career survey of Lawren Stewart Harris, founding member of the Group of Seven, traces Harris' artistic evolution from the early years of the twentieth century to the mid-1960s, illustrating his move from representational art to abstraction.